Much interest has been expressed recently in providing local loop services via mediums other than public switched telephone network (PSTN) copper wire local loops. Local loop services, also referred to as ‘last mile’ services, are the connection between the subscriber location and a local office or other access point to the PSTN.
One alternative to conventional copper wire local loop infrastructures is wireless local loop (WLL) systems that connect subscribers to the PSTN using radio signals to exchange information, as a substitute for copper wiring, over all or part of the connection between the subscriber and the PSTN. WLL systems have been installed in various locations to date, primarily third world or developing nations where the cost to establish a copper wire infrastructure for local loop services is very high. In more industrialized locations such as North America, including locations were a copper wire infrastructure already exists, great interest in WLL also exists to provide competition in local access services.
Generally, WLL systems developed and/or proposed to date build upon techniques and technologies developed for cellular mobile voice systems, including analog cellular (AMPS) and GSM or CDMA (PCS) cellular systems. Such systems have proven to be very successful to date at providing mobile voice wireless communications and much development has been performed with respect to their technologies.
The present inventors have determined however, that while WLL systems based upon mobile cellular technologies can provide reasonable voice performance, they do not provide a cost effective range of services and/or radio resource efficiencies that will be desired for WLL systems which provide voice and data services.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,075,784 to Frankel et al. teaches a remote data terminal which supports two or more telephone and/or data devices and which connects to a network via a digital subscriber line (DSL) replacement for a conventional local loop. While the remote data terminal taught by Frankel does deal with sharing the DSL line between multiple devices/users at the subscriber end, as the DSL line is not shared with other subscribers/remote terminals, Frankel does not teach the management of data transmission and/or network resources between multiple subscriber units.
It is therefore desired to have a system, apparatus and method to provide local loop services via wireless communications which allows a range of services to be provided in an efficient manner.